Oct 28, 2016 2 min read

After finding out her husband had liver cancer before his death Dec. 16, 2011, Susan Bowers made three promises to her soulmate.

The last of those three promises was kept when Bowers went to get the mail earlier this month to retrieve stories of the annual Candlelight Ghost Walk, which she began 19 years ago to raise funds for Monongahela Area Historical Society.

The package Bowers received was 26 of the various ghost stories she has encountered and chronicled during her time as the leader of the event in her published book, “Haunted Tales along the Mon.”

“People were always saying that I should be putting this information into a book,” Bowers said. “I told them I was planning on it. That was 15 years ago.”

Since, Bowers has recounted the tales she has been told, many of which are from the renowned buildings 19th century architect John Blythe designed along West Main Street in Monongahela.

“I didn’t know if I believed in ghosts,” Bowers recalled before a ghost walk she attended in Wheeling, W.Va., when she first considered bringing the event to the Valley. “I was the last one in a room of this unfurnished house and heard a moan. I ran out of that house and was scared to death.”

The retired Ringgold School District teacher is the first to admit her experience, along with photos from Candlelight Ghost Walk and attendees’ stories, have made the previous skeptic into a believer.

Some have even told her of different paranormal sightings in her Victorian-style home that was built in 1807.

“I sleep with my television on every night,” Bowers said. “My daughter and son-in-law moved in after my husband passed away for a little bit. They have even heard something walking on the third floor on several occasions.”

A lifetime Monongahela resident, Bowers doesn’t think she will be remembered as a teacher or an author, but for walking the streets with lantern in hand, leading ghost tours on the same streets she walked as a child.

“There are people in the big city that yearn for a town like this, and sometimes we take it for granted,” Bowers said. “I try to think about how lucky we really are and don’t even realize it.”

Bowers’ book will be on sale at the Witch Festival Oct. 29.